Background
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney was born on February 25, 1746, in Charleston, South California.
lawyer planter Soldier statesman
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney was born on February 25, 1746, in Charleston, South California.
He was educated at Westminster School and Oxford.
Destined for a legal career, he attended Middle Temple (1764 - 1769) and was admitted to practice. Despite his English residence, Pinckney regarded America as home, and he returned full of patriotic ardor. He served as attorney general for three South Carolina districts. His marriage to Sally Middleton strengthened his ties with the colony's leading families. Following the rupture with England, Pinckney was active on his colony's Committee of Intelligence. He became a militia captain and was chairman of the committee that drafted South Carolina's 1776 constitution. In July 1777 he tried to join George Washington's northern command, but no battlefield opportunities came his way, and Pinckney soon returned to South Carolina. When the British finally attacked Charleston, his bad advice led to a disastrous American defeat in May 1780 during which Pinckney himself was captured. After the war Pinckney veered toward a nationalistic course in his support of enlarged powers for the Continental Congress. He resumed his lucrative law practice, but his personal life was saddened in 1784 by his wife's death, which left him with three young daughters. Chosen as a delegate to the Federal Convention in 1787, Pinckney supported a stronger central government and was an adamant defender of slavery. He signed the Constitution and worked successfully for its ratification in his home state. Pinckney turned down an offer to become secretary of war in 1794 and later also rejected the secretary of state post. However, in 1796 he was persuaded to become the American minister in Paris, taking on the job of appeasing the French government's anger over Jay's Treaty. Pinckney's mission of reconciliation was early discredited by scheming French diplomats, and he was expelled in 1797. Later, under the new president, John Adams, Pinckney, John Marshall, and Elbridge Gerry were appointed special envoys to heal the Franco-American breach. Steadily, Pinckney's political stance became more Federalist; in 1800 he was advanced as the party's vice-presidential candidate. He was the Federalist candidate for president in 1804 and 1808. Three successive defeats in elections ended his national ambitions. Thereafter, he devoted his energies to South Carolina's affairs, particularly education and philanthropy. He died on August 16, 1825.
Castle Pinckney in Charleston Harbor, completed about 1810, Pinckney Island National Wildlife Refuge, Pinckney Elementary School in Lawrence, Kansas, are named for Charles C. Pinckney. A school in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, is also has the name of C. C. Pinckney Elementary. In 1942, during World War II, a 422-foot liberty ship was built in Wilmington, North Carolina, and named SS Charles C. Pinckney in his honor. Pinckney Street on Beacon Hill in Boston, Massachusetts, Pinckney Street in Madison, Wisconsin and Pinckneyville, Illinois, were named after him.
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
(Excerpt from Nebuchadnezzars's Fault and Fall: A Sermon, ...)
Quotations: “Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute. ”
a member of the South Carolina Senate
In 1773, Pinckney married Sarah Middleton. Sarah died in 1784. In 1786, he remarried to Mary Stead, who came from a wealthy family of planters in Georgia. Pinckney had three daughters.
August 13, 1699 - July 12, 1758
December 28, 1722 - May 28, 1793
1747 - 1747
October 22, 1750 - November 2, 1828
August 7, 1748 - December 19, 1830
1750 - 1812
July 5, 1756 - May 8, 1784
1777 - 1836
1777 - 1851
17 December 1776 - 15 March 1866